Mysterious Mogullumbidj — First People of Mount Buffalo

15 Sunday Dec 2019

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Aboriginal, Aboriginal massacres, Mount Buffalo, Squatters, Uncategorized

Tags

Kullakullup, Minjambuta, Minyambuta, Mogullumbidj, Mogullumbitch, Mogullumbith, Mokalumbeets, William Barak

WARNING: VISITORS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT THIS BLOG POST INCLUDES IMAGES AND NAMES OF DECEASED PEOPLE THAT MAY CAUSE SADNESS OR DISTRESS, PARTICULARLY TO ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER PEOPLES. IN PARTICULAR, I ACKNOWLEDGE THE ABORIGINAL ANCESTORS WHOSE WORDS ARE QUOTED WITHIN THIS POST, WITH THE GREATEST RESPECT FOR THEIR LEGACY.

Who were the Mogullumbidj, what happened to them, and why aren’t they on any maps of Aboriginal Victoria?

Looking towards Mount Buffalo, across the Ovens Valley from Reform Hill in Myrtleford (image: Jacqui Durrant, 2019)

I’ve titled this blog post ‘the Mysterious Mogullumbidj’. The reason why I describe the Mogullumbidj people as ‘mysterious’, is that as a historian looking through archival materials, I’ve found different groups of Aboriginal people, from the 1840s right through to the end of the 19th century — from locations from Mansfield to Melbourne and Omeo, referring to the people of Mount Buffalo as the ‘Mogullumbidj’ or ‘Mogullumbeek’ (or variations on these spellings), but today, this name is practically unknown outside of obscure academic and historical sources. You will not find Mogullumbidj on many maps of Aboriginal Victoria. Instead, you will sometimes find what to the untrained ear seems like a related term, but which is actually unrelated — ‘Minyambuta’. So the predominant questions I hope to answer in this post are — who were the Mogullumbidj, what happened to them, and why aren’t they ‘on the map’?

Aboriginal society in the alpine valleys of North East Victoria

In order to explain who the Aboriginal people of the Mount Buffalo and surrounding areas were, first it’s necessary to explain the structuring principles which organised Aboriginal society in this part of the world.

To begin with, when talking about their social organisation with Europeans, it seems that historically, Aboriginal people always identified first and foremost the name of their local area group, which some anthropologists have referred to as ‘clans’, or more recently and more correctly (in my opinion) as ‘areal-moieties’ (a social group attached to a geographical area, with a ‘moiety’ also attached to that group). [1] Local groups actually comprised a number of smaller ‘patri-clans’, which were land-owning families headed up by the male head of that family, but when Aboriginal people identified themselves to Europeans, they generally named their local group (areal-moiety) first and foremost. In this blog post, I will simply refer to these areal-moieties as ‘local groups’. At this time — the 1830s and 1840s — local groups appear to have been the principal unit of identity from an Aboriginal point of view — as least in terms of defining an inherited attachment to an area of land, or rather, the right to manage, utilise and belong to a certain area of country. It’s thought that such a local group would typically comprise a few hundred individuals, [2] and usually they had a core area of country which Europeans would readily associate with the presence of that particular group.

Only after a massive decline in the Aboriginal population which frequently reduced these local groups from a few hundred to a mere handful of survivors did Aboriginal peoples in north east Victoria begin to drop their local group names, and eventually replace them with the broader language-based names that we see today.

The territorial boundaries of these local groups were likely indicated by landscape features, and people from a different area needed permission to enter that country and make use of its resources. [3]

Each local group was essentially independent, and governed by collective decisions. Insofar as we know, each had one or two heads; who would provide guidance and advice during group discussions, and represent that group at larger meetings in which a number of local groups assembled to make joint decisions. These head positions were neither automatically inherited nor elected. Often a head person, towards the end of his or her life (because women also had some power), would nominate their successor, but that nominee still had to prove their competence and win endorsement. [4]

As an aside, there was communication across different language groups, so most adults were multi-lingual, and etiquette seems to have required that visitors to another language area should make polite efforts to substitute some words of that country. [5]

Usually, the actual name of this local group would have a suffix on the end which denoted its status as a local area group. Closer to Melbourne, the suffix was ‘—[w]illum’ (or ‘—yellum’) meaning ‘dwelling place’ or ‘—balluk’ meaning number of people. However, in north east Victoria, this suffix was ‘—mittung’ (or variations), which also meant a group or number of people. So you get names in the north east like Pallangan-middang, Djinning-mittung, Yait-mathang and so on. [6] Now, I can hear some brains ticking over, and you’re thinking — what about the Mogullumbidj? It’s a local group name, but it has no ‘—mittung’ or ‘—illum’ suffix on the end, which is one part of the mystery we’ll come to, but we do know that in all likelihood, they were a local group, because of the context in which their name was used.

The next tier in the social structure, is that ‘local groups’ were usually a part of a broader group sharing the same language — whether directly or in the form of a dialect. For many of these broader groups, stretching from Melbourne right into North East Victoria, the suffix used to denote these broader groups was ‘-(w)urrung’, which means mouth or speech. In simple terms ‘—wurrung’ denoted a collection of local groups sharing a language. The —wurrung suffix can be heard in the name of the North East Victorian group, Taungurung (Daung-wurrung), and also in ‘Woi-wurrung’, and ‘Ngaurai-illum wurrung’. Further to the north and north-east of the Taungurung, ‘—wurrung’ was replaced by ‘—wurru’, so that one finds a broader group named Waveroo (Way-wurru). The suffix ‘—wurru’ can even be found in a vestigial form in the language name Dhudhuroa (Dhu-dhu-[wu]rru-wa). [7]

In some cases, these broad language groups also considered themselves part of an even larger group, which have been described by non-Aboriginal people as ‘nations’ or ‘confederacies’. One of these ‘nations’, which reached from the Mornington Peninsula and Melbourne, right through the upper Goulburn and Campaspe River Valleys and into North East Victoria, at least as far as the Broken and Delatite Rivers, and perhaps further — was the ‘Kulin’ nation — a block of five broad language groups. All of the Kulin nation’s constituent members shared similar languages, as well as cultural practices and close diplomatic relations. [8]

So — local area group, language group, sometimes ‘nation’. Worth pointing out is Europeans have generally hopelessly confused these different elements in NE Victoria, especially on maps.

The other important organising principal of Aboriginal society within south-eastern Australia, which was generally invisible to Europeans, was the ‘moiety’ system. From the Port Phillip Bay area into North East Victoria and beyond in some cases, each local group belonged to either one of two moieties, which were named for the ancestral creation figures of Bunjil — the eagle hawk, and Waa — the crow. This division between the two moieties effectively divided society into two parts. If you were born into one moiety, you had to marry someone of the opposite moiety — necessarily someone of a different local group. Bunjil always married waa and vice versa. Women went to live on their husband’s country — sometimes to quite distant localities. Moiety affiliations shaped patterns of intermarriage, and therefore also reciprocal rights to resources. As the late anthropologist Diane Barwick once wrote of the Kulin peoples, through the moiety system, ‘District loyalties were thereby extended, and travel and trade with more remote areas were encouraged by the resulting web of kinship ties.’ [9]

One thing we can say about the Mogullumbidj, from information collected by nineteenth century anthropologist Alfred Howitt, who interviewed Wurundjeri elder William Barak, is that the Mogullumbidj were Bunjil — eagle hawk moiety, which meant that they could have, for example, intermarried with their immediate neighbours to the south, a Taungurung local group of the Mansfield area, Yowen-illum-balak, but not with their Pallangan-middang neighbours just over in Whorouly, Milawa and Beechworth area, who were also Bunjil. [10] In theory, they also could have intermarried with groups like Wurundjeri-illum, a waa local group, whose country reached along the south banks of the Yarra River from about Blackburn, right up to the Northern slopes of the Dandenong ranges. Certainly, Mogullumbidj and Dhudhuroa peoples were remembered by William Barak as having visited their ‘friends at the Dandenong mountain.’ This friendship probably came from kinship ties. [11]

Diplomatic, trade and kinship ties with other groups

The next thing I want to talk about is whether the Mogullumbidj were, like the Taungurung local groups, part of the ‘Kulin nation’. Right now, it’s of great topical interest that the modern-day Taungurung Lands and Waters Council to the south, which represent the Taungurung peoples of the ‘Kulin nation’, have become the Registered Aboriginal Party (RAP) for an area including Mount Buffalo — and this claim has been challenged by other local Aboriginal groups. Consequently, I thought I would pose the question as to whether or not the Mogullumbidj can be considered a Taungurung local group, or more broadly, a Kulin local group. I think this is a worthwhile question — not because there is an easy answer, but because in attempting to answer that question, we can actually get a real insight into the complexity of local Aboriginal society at the time of European settlement.

In late 1838, what would become North East Victoria was being ‘settled’ by European pastoralists, and the following year, the colonial government of NSW, appointed its first ‘Aboriginal Protectorate’ for the Port Philip district (which would become Victoria). Headed up by a Chief Protector, George Augustus Robinson, the Protectorate was a mere handful of men, ‘Assistant Protectors’, each stationed in a different area, supposedly to look out for the interests of Aboriginal peoples whose lands had been invaded. The Protectorate was hopelessly underfunded, under-staffed and generally powerless. Despite calls from the Chief Protector of Aborigines, George Augustus Robinson, [12] no Assistant Protector was ever appointed to oversee this north east region. The notes of George Augustus Robinson and his Assistant Protectors, have provided an invaluable historical record of early Aboriginal Victoria, but none them were ever stationed in North East Victoria, or visited certain parts of North East Victoria like Mount Buffalo. This is a major reason why we have nothing recorded about the Mogullumbidj that has come from the Mogullumbidj people themselves. Instead, we only have information about the Mogullumbidj that has come from what Aboriginal people from other areas told various officers of the Aboriginal Protectorate. However, from Aboriginal people who spoke to George Augustus Robinson, and one of his Assistant Protectors, James Dredge, in the 1840s, we know that the Mogullumbidj people of the Buffalo River had country that extended to the south at least as far as Dandongadale and the Wabonga Plateau, to the back of Mount Buller. [13] Beyond this, we know next to nothing about the extent of their country other than what we can establish by exclusion: the fact that they were bounded by country associated with a Gunai-Kurnai local group on the Dargo High Plains, [14] and by the Pallangan-middang local group, whose country included Whorouly, and the King River Valley as far as the confluence of the King and Ovens River at Wangaratta. [15] The Mogullumbidj also would have had various Dhudhuroa-speaking neighbours to their north east and east. [16]

The Kulin peoples to the south, [17] and other people of the Victorian alpine region, [18] referred to the people of the Buffalo River as ‘Mo-gullum-bidj’ or variations of this (like ‘Mokeallumbeet’). As I said before, this name has no typical north-east Victorian suffix of ‘—mittung’ on the end, and nor does it have a typical Kulin suffix of ‘—illum’ or ‘—baluk’ on the end. Almost all the Taungurung local groups had an ‘—illum or ‘—baluk’ suffix, donating Kulin connections, but not so with the Mogullumbidj. It is possible that ‘—bidj’ is an actual suffix, and that it denotes something in particular, but unfortunately we just don’t know. And there are other possible explanations — that ‘Mogullumbidj’ may have, for example, been a descriptive term, applied by other peoples who for some reason didn’t want to speak the ‘Mogullumbidj’s’ self-designated name aloud. Ian Clark has also come up with alternative theories for their unusual name. [19] In essence, their name alone cannot help us understand their cultural position, other than to suggest something separate or possibly special about them.

So if their actual name tells us very little about where they fit in culturally, then perhaps we can consider their diplomatic relations with other groups: Who were they on good terms with, for trade and cultural exchange; and who were they hostile towards? In 1844, George Augustus Robinson undertook a journey which took him through Gippsland, Omeo, and the Monaro, to Twofold Bay (Eden), then over to Albury and back down to Melbourne. [20] For the part of the journey which would take him to Omeo, he was guided by an Aboriginal man from Omeo, whose conferred name was ‘Charley’, and it was Charley who explained to Robinson that ‘The Yowenillum are mermate with Mokeallumbeet, then Dodora, then Kinimittum, then Omeo.’ [21] The term ‘mermate’ or ‘mey-met’ means that the Yowung-illum-balluk were on unfriendly terms with the Mogullumbidj, Dodora, Djinning-mittung and Yaitmathang, which were all adjoining groups of the alpine valleys. Whether Charley was overstating the fact about this Taungurung group being at odds with the others, or over-simplifying things for Robinson, we’ll never know. But what’s interesting about this grouping is that the local groups are actually listed in consecutive geographical order from west to east — suggesting that Charley had a very clear picture in his mind of this allied block of alpine peoples reaching from Mount Buffalo to Omeo.

The same local group names appeared again in Robinson’s journal, written while he was on the Tambo River. He recorded that ‘Two miles above the crossing place up the stream is the spot where a great slaughter of Gipps Land blacks by the Omeo and the Mokeallumbeets and Tinnermittum, their allies, took place; [I] was shown the spot by… Charley…’ [22] Once again, this can be seen as an expression of an alpine-based group alliance against a common enemy, in this case, the Kurnai peoples of Gippsland.

So there’s some evidence that the Mogullumbidj were on unfriendly terms with the Kurnai and perhaps some Taungurung local groups, and that they were allied in battle with other alpine groups. However, what I can now say, with the overview that a historical perspective provides, is that Robinson’s guide Charley was seemingly unaware of what was then a very recent event — and this was that, only the preceding summer to that journey with Robinson, the Mogullumbidj had actually travelled to Melbourne and undertaken a special new ceremony (called a ‘Gaiggip’) with the Yowung-illum-balluk and other Kulin groups in order to ‘make friends’. [23]

That summer of 1843-44, the Mogullumbidj people visited Yarra Bend (where Merri Creek meets the Yarra) in Melbourne, for a large ceremonial gathering with Kulin peoples, which involved 800 people of seven different groups. The ‘gaiggip’ ceremony, which they had brought with them, was recorded in a good amount of detail at the time by another Assistant Protector of Aborigines in Melbourne, William Thomas. He wrote that the ceremony, which ran for six days, consisted of seven different dances: the first six involved an individual weapon of war, but the 7th dance was with a leafy bough — the emblem of peace. Each group was represented by its own bark emblem ‘each of which has a division of seven patches of “wurup” (an emblem of joy & cheerfulness), and at the end of the ceremony, these were ‘collected together and put in the centre of the encampment in silence, proclaiming goodwill to all around.’ [24]

One can speculate that when the Mogullumbidj participated in the gaiggip ceremony in Melbourne to ‘make friends’ with the various Kulin groups, that they were in the process of realigning their diplomatic relations, and perhaps were even being newly incorporated into the Kulin polity. This should be considered in context: that the early 1840s was an unprecedented period of social turmoil and upheaval, in which Aboriginal people were dealing with a horrific destruction of their lands and people — and that this social upheaval may have encouraged previously disparate Aboriginal groups to unite in their common struggle for cultural, spiritual and everyday survival.

Indeed one newspaper report of the day, in which a European man asked some Kulin people what the gaiggip was about, he recorded that the ceremony was ‘an incantation — the intention of which is to remove the terrible epidemic under which so many of them are labouring.’ [25] I’m certain that this was an extraordinarily over-simplified explanation, but it still conveys a sense of urgent response to the circumstances of the day.

What language did the Mogullumbidj speak?

The other thing we might consider about the Mogullumbidj in trying to determine where they fit in culturally, is to ask what language they spoke. In Melbourne, assistant protector William Thomas did manage to record six words of Mogullumbidj language. Six words isn’t a lot to go on, but on the basis of what we have, leading La Trobe University linguist Stephen Morey has concluded that the Mogullumbidj clearly spoke Dhudhuroa language. [26]

And there’s other evidence to suggest they spoke at least a form of Dhudhuroa language. Just after the turn of the century, amateur ethnographer RH Mathews interviewed a Djinning-mittang man from the lower Mitta Mitta valley, Neddy Wheeler, who said that his people spoke Dhudhuroa, and that surrounding peoples south of the Murray River spoke — at least what Mathews recorded as a ‘dialect of Dhudhuroa’ — called ‘Minyambuta.’ According to Mathews, Minyambuta was spoken from Wangaratta to Bright, to Beechworth, Mount Buffalo, and even in Benalla. [27] Supporting evidence includes that in 1844, a Pallanganmiddang man Mol.le.min.ner gave George Augustus Robinson a vocabulary of his own peoples’ language (which Robinson recorded as ‘Pallangan-middang’), but Mol.le.min.ner also added that when at Yackandandah, his people spoke ‘Min-u-buddong’. [28] Decades later, when Alfred Howitt asked the Wurunjeri elder William Barak if he could remember what language the Mogullumbidj spoke, he answered ‘Yambun’, which sounds like a foreshortened version of Min-yambun. [29] So we have three historical records of the term: ‘Minyambuta’ ‘Minubuddong’ and (possibly) Min-‘yambun’. There is just one complicating factor in all this — that Mathews’ description of the area in which Minyambuta was spoken, overlaps heavily with the area in which Pallangan-middang was spoken, so either Minyambuta and Pallanganmiddang are the same language (bearing in mind that Pallanganmiddang had a 25% commonality with Dhudhuroa), [30] or that one language gradually ‘bled’ into the other depending on your location and perhaps who you were talking with — meaning that Minyambuta was the term for this ‘language strategy,’ rather than an actual dialect.

(As an aside, it is important to note that ‘Minyambuta’ is language term, not a people, and also that it is certainly not a word meaning ‘hills and ranges’ — even though Norman Tindale mapped it in 1974 seemingly as a people who lived among hills and ranges! Also, if you see it spelled ‘Minjambuta,’ the use of the J in place of a Y simply reflects a fashion in linguistics from the 1970s. You will also see Yorta Yorta appear on maps in the 1970s as Jota Jota.)

The bottom line is that in Melbourne, William Thomas was so proficient in Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung languages that he could deliver parts of his religion sermons in those Kulin languages, [31] but when he heard Mogullumbidj people speaking, it was incomprehensible to him. [32] Therefore it is unlikely the Mogullumbidj spoke a Kulin language as their first language.

And there is one other point worth considering about language. The song performed at the gaiggip ceremony, which was brought to Melbourne by the Mogullumbidj and their Taungurung neighbours, and was written down, seems to have been sung in one of the Yuin languages [33] — which I note includes Ngarigu, which was spoken in different forms from the Snowy Mountains to the Monaro and Omeo. The presence of this language at a ceremony in Melbourne demonstrates a great cultural connectivity between the Aboriginal groups of the alpine areas from the Snowy mountains right down to Mount Buffalo and Mount Buller.

The Mogullumbidj and cultural knowledge

Despite the fact that we know very little about the exact place of the Mogullumbidj in the wider Aboriginal society, we do know that they were a people who held significant, sacred cultural knowledge. When in 1843, William Thomas inquired with a Taungurung man about the history of the gaiggip ceremony that had been brought to Melbourne with the Mogullumbidj, he was told in no uncertain terms that there was, in the Alps, a group of Aboriginal people called the Bul-lun.ger.metum (Bullunger-mittung) who lived in stone houses of their own making, and who never went out to seek their own food, but instead ate herbs and relied on what others brought them, and they focused solely on creating new sacred songs and dances. [34] These people were something akin to a superior religious class, but which Thomas would later classify as Aboriginal druids. [35] These ‘great wise blacks’ were responsible for teaching song and dance to people from Omeo, to Mansfield, Benalla and Wangaratta, and as far as the Murrumbidgee River and even to Eden on the coast. And when one of these groups had a gaiggip ceremony with another, from that time they were friends. [36]

Moreover, different Aboriginal peoples sent their own ‘doctors’ to these druids in order to learn, but by the same token, the druids were able to make other people dream, or they could appear before them, to show them new dances (and by the term ‘dances’, we should infer a much deeper form of sacred and cultural knowledge than what non-Aboriginal peoples would generally imagine). Thomas also would later write that ‘I am informed that from these sages of the rocks or druids have sprung [this] new series of sacred dances with such curious effigies, altogether new from any thing that has as yet been heard or seen among the Aborigines of Victoria.’ [37]

Clearly, if the Mogullumbidj weren’t the actual druids in question, they were in close contact with them, and able to transmit the sacred cultural and spiritual information encoded in these new forms of ceremony, song and dance, to the wider world.

When the revered head man of the Mogullumbidj, Kullakullup, came to Melbourne in March 1845, [38] he was of advanced age, but hundreds of people from different Kulin groups assembled at what is now Yarra Bend park to receive his teachings. Thomas wrote that, ‘the sight was truly imposing’… Kullakullup was idolised to the point where at each daybreak people assembled in crescent rows, and sat in profound silence while, in Thomas’s words, the ‘Old Patriarch would be holding forth as though laying down some code of laws for their guidance or giving instructions… I often endeavour’d to catch his words and pencil them down as well as I could but in vain, the old Idol and Chief would immediately stop on my approach.’ [39]

Thomas eventually made inquiries with one of the men attending Kullakullup’s teachings — Billibellary, who was an influential Wurunjeri head-man and song-man in his own right. Billibellary told William Thomas that Kullerkullup had spoken of this class of druid-like people who lived in the Alps who created corroborees for everyone, and Kullerkullup also said that he received corroborees communicated to him in dreams. It is likely that Billibellary was not communicating to Thomas the full scope of what was being taught by Kullakullup, but Thomas was left with the impression that the much venerated headman had been ‘laying down some code of laws (for their guidance) or giving instructions’. [40] Unfortunately for us, this seems to be the only remaining record we have of this venerable headman of Mount Buffalo.

What happened to the Mogullumbidj people?

In North East Victoria, there was a huge decline in the local Aboriginal population from mid-1838 onwards. For years this was blamed in retrospect on the introduction of European diseases, and then the excess consumption of alcohol. And it is true that lethal new diseases like small pox and syphilis brought on a massive loss of life and also caused infertility.

However, the population decline among local Aboriginal people in the immediate decade from 1838 onwards was predominantly by illegal poisoning and shooting, carried out by European settlers. When asked about this population decline 20 years later, at an 1858 Select Committee of the NSW Legislative Council, most of those questioned — all European men of some social and economic standing from around Victoria — avoided the awful truth by referring only to events of the preceding decade. However, Mr Wills of Omeo replied, ‘The mortality has been… caused by intoxicating drinks and the worst form of venereal disease, and last though not least, by gunshot wounds inflicted by stockmen.’ [41]

Can we say that this happened to the Mogullumbidj people of Mount Buffalo?

When visiting the region in February 1841, a little over two years after the first permanent arrival of Europeans, George Augustus Robinson wrote of pastoralist George Faithfull at Oxley on the King River, that ‘Faithful has the credit for having shot a number of blacks in his time and for having encouraged his men who were convicts.’ [42] Faithful even later recorded in a letter to Govenor La Trobe his shooting of Aboriginal people on the King River; [43] and towards the end of his life, Faithfull’s stockman James Howard would reminiscence in The Argus newspaper about Faithfull’s men having shot more than 200 Aboriginal people in one day, leaving bodies along the river. [44]

Significantly, it was George Faithful and his brutal convict servants who were the first to take up the Buffalo River area as a heifer station in the summer of 1839-40. [45] At the time it was a remote location beyond the reach of the Border Police, and there is no record of what happened. Sadly, this post cannot begin to touch on the level of brutality of the Europeans at this time, the factors which enabled the massacres to happen and go unpunished, and the impact that this had on Aboriginal people.

However, it is worth noting that some Aboriginal people in north east Victoria survived and did their utmost to stay on country; and that they retained their traditional seasonal patterns of movement well after European settlement, for as long as possible. Certainly, in Beechworth, the gold rush era of the 1850s overlapped with Aboriginal people still living a traditional lifestyle, as best they could manage. We even have a photograph of Aboriginal people in the Mount Buffalo area probably from the late 19th century, who are clearly living a partly Europeanised but still partly traditional existence, and we know that they continued to use a campsite at Nug Nug until the closing decades of the 19th century. [46] While some were pushed onto religious missions and government reserves off country, others integrated into European society as station-hands and household servants — their children and grandchildren progressively concealed their Aboriginality, and so they disappeared from the historical record, but interestingly, some are now being rediscovered as ancestors, by their descendants of today.

To return to my initial questions, of who were the Mogullumbidj, what happened to them, and why aren’t the Mogullumbidj ‘on the map’? The answer to who they were is complicated: they were a local group who considered the Buffalo River valley a part of their country, and who — at least around the time of early Aboriginal-European contact — had alliances against common foes with a range of ‘—mittung’ local groups of the alpine valleys and ranges, not just on the western side of the Alps, but over to Omeo. The Mogullumbidj were, it seems, one possible conduit through which a special class of stone-house-dwelling Aboriginal ‘druids’ passed on new and sacred forms of song and dance; and they also had a widely revered headman in Kullakullup, who transmitted valuable cultural and spiritual information from the alps to as far away as as Melbourne. And within a few years of European settlement, it seems that the Mogullumbidj were either forging new, or strengthen existing, diplomatic relations with the Kulin peoples. Why aren’t they on most maps? The short answer is that local group names, or ‘clan’ names, particularly in north east Victoria, rapidly fell from use, and instead have been replaced with broader language-based group names. The debate about which broader group name should be associated with the people of Mount Buffalo is still continuing among Aboriginal groups today.

References

[1] Tony Jeffries, ‘The Eastern Kulin Confederacy: Did it exist? If so, what were its features?’ Forthcoming paper to be published in Artefact (journal of the Archaeological and Anthropological Society of Victoria).
[2] Gary Presland, First People: The Eastern Kulin of Melbourne, Port Phillip & Central Victoria, Museum of Victoria, Melbourne, 2010, p.18.
[3] Diane Barwick, ‘Mapping the Past: An Atlas of Victorian Clans 1835-1904,’ Aboriginal History, Vol. 8, 1984, pp100-131. This reference, p. 106; Gary Presland, op. cit. p.16.
[4] Diane Barwick, ibid., pp: 107-8.
[5] Diane Barwick, ibid., p.105.
[6] Diane Barwick, ibid, p.106, including footnote 9.
[7] Clark, Ian, ‘Aboriginal languages in North-east Victoria – the status of ‘Waveru’ reconsidered’, Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues, 2011, Vol. 14(4): 2-22 [see this discussion of ‘Waywurru’ in this paper]; Barry J. Blake and Julie Reid, ‘The Dhudhuroa language of northeastern Victoria: a description based on historical sources,’ ABORIGINAL HISTORY, 2002, VOL 26, pp: 177-210, this reference, p.179
[8] Diane Barwick, op. cit., pp:104-6.; Gary Presland, op. cit.
[9] Diane Barwick, ibid, p.105.
[10] A large list of areal-moieties is contained in Alfred Howitt’s notebook XM690; and information specifically about the Mogullumbidj appears in Alfred Howitt’s notebook XM765, p.12 (both held in Museum of Victoria archives).
[11] Alfred Howitt notebook: hw0391 ‘Notes by Howitt on Kulin from Barak,’ p.96. This is held at the State Library of Victoria.
Barak explains to Howitt that it was Theddora-mittung (Dhudhuroa) who came to Melbourne as ‘friends of the Kulin of the Dandenong Mountain’, and this is discussed in relation to visits of the Mogullumbidj to Melbourne.
[12] British Parliamentary Papers, Despatches of Governors of Australian Colonies, illustrative of Conditions of Aborigines, House of Commons, Paper Series: House of Commons Papers, Paper Type: Accounts and Papers Parliament: 1844, Paper Number: 627; p.85-87-96; p,106, p.124, p.237-238, p.281. This reference, p.109. Robinson wrote: ‘I am induced under the current circumstances to recommend a subordinate agent be appointed to the Ovens district.’
[13] Assistant Protector of Aborigines James Dredge told George Augustus Robinson that the Mogullumbidj occupied country on ‘Hunter and Watson’s outermost station’. [James Dredge, cited by Robinson, 9 April 1840, in Ian Clark (ed.), The Journals of George Augustus Robinson, and this same information was repeated to Robinson by a group of Kulin speakers in Taungurung lands, to the effect that the Mogullumbidj lived on country at Hunter and Watson’s beyond Marine and Warinebut, to the SE.’ [Robinson, 1 June 1840] (That is beyond Marine and Warinebut, meaning Mount Buller and Timbertop).
[14] Alfred Howitt, notebook XM690, p.51; held at Museum of Victoria archives; accessible (with other materials referenced here) via the Howitt and Fison Archives.
[15] The evidence for this is contained in my essay ‘Who were the Aboriginal people of Beechworth? A historical perspective’ published on this blog.
[16] Clark, Ian, ‘Dhudhuroa and Yaithmathang languages and social groups in north-east Victoria – a reconstruction,’ ABORIGINAL HISTORY, 2009 VOL 33, pp.201-229, offers the best explanation to date of the Dhudhuroa and Yaitmathang areal moiety groups. For all that Clark gets right, I do not agree completely with his assessment of the Yaitmathang, but this is a matter unrelated to this post.
[17] Alfred Howitt’s information from William Barak, is an example of a Kulin person referring to the ‘Mogullum-bitch’. (See: Alfred Howitt, hw0391 Notes by Howitt on Kulin from Barak, p.96 held at the State Library of Victoria.)
[18] An example of an Omeo (Yaitmathang) man referring to the ‘Mokeallumbeet’ is found in the The Journals of George Augustus Robinson, entry for 3 June 1844.
[19] Ian Clark, ‘Aboriginal language areas in Northeast Victoria: ‘Mogullumbidj’ reconsidered.’ Victorian Historical Journal, Volume 81 Issue 2 (Nov 2010), 181-192.
[20] George Mackaness (ed.), George Augustus Robinson’s journey into south-eastern Australia, 1844, with George Henry Haydon’s narrative of part of the same journey. Australian Historical Monographs, Volume XIX, Sydney, 1941.
[21] The Journals of George Augustus Robinson, entry for 3 June 1844.
[22] Robinson, entry for 15 June 1844.
[23] Excerpt from a ‘Quarterly Report from 1 Dec 1843 to 1 March 1844′ by William Thomas, contained in: Marguerita Stephens, The Journal of William Thomas, Assistant Protector of the Aborigines of Port Phillip & Guardian to the Aborigines of Victoria 1839-1867, Volume One: 1839-1843, VCAL, Melbourne, 2014, page 572-3, footnote 240. See also the same transcribed in: Christie, M F, 1979. Aborigines in Colonial Victoria 1835-1886. Sydney University Press, p.19. Note: Stephens had partly mis-transcribed the Report, and my information comes from a combination of Christie and Stephens.
[24] ibid.
[25] ‘ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE. ABORIGINAL CEREMONY.’ Letter from J. H. McCabe, published in the Port Philip Gazette, Saturday, 11 February, 1843, p.3.
[26] Stephen Morey, Indigenous Songs of Victoria, in section ‘3.4.9.1 The Tanderrum Ceremony,’ publication forthcoming, hopefully soon in 2020. (Personal comment: I believe this book will become extremely important in our understanding of Aboriginal Victoria.)
[27] R. H. Matthews, MS 8006, Series 3, Item 4, Volume 2 [Marked on notebook ‘6’], pp.38, 40; and R H Mathews, MS8006 Series 5 File 3 Box 6, ‘The Dhudhuroa Language,’ material held at National Library of Australia.
It is very important to note that Matthews’ writings, after having communicated with Dhudhuroa-speaker Neddy Wheeler, are the primary source of the term ‘Minyambuta’, and are also the sole source used by Tindale, who actually mapped it in 1974 as if the term referred to an identifiable people. When one reads Matthews’ manuscript materials, it is apparent that it is not a people.
[28] Journals of George Augustus Robinson (ed. Ian Clark), entry for 30 September, 1844.
[29] Diane Barwick, manuscript material MS 13521, at the State Library of Victoria, Series 4, 4006, folder 1248.
In a note at the bottom of a page on the ‘Mokalumbeets’, Barwick has written ‘Mo-gullum-bitch tribe of Buffalo Rivber – name of language was Yambun (Shaw to Howitt 27.7.00) (says Barak), and in pencil ‘Barak info in 1900 letter Shaw to Howitt named language of Mogullumbitch is Yambun’. (Personal comment: I have not been able to locate the original letter yet. If you know of its whereabouts, please let me know.)
[30] Barry J. Blake and Julie Reid, ‘Pallanganmiddang: a language of the Upper Murray,’ Aboriginal History, 1999, Vol. 23, pp.15-30. This reference, p.17.
[31] Throughout William Thomas’s journal (Stephens, Volume One, op. cit.) one can see Thomas initially lamenting his lack of Aboriginal language skills, and his intentional building of those skills so that he can give lessons and sermons using local languages.
[32] William Thomas wrote in his journal on 22 March 1845 of the Mogullumbidj ‘I cannot understand a word of their language.’ in Marguerita Stephens, The Journal of William Thomas, Assistant Protector of the Aborigines of Port Phillip & Guardian to the Aborigines of Victoria 1839-1867, Volume Two: 1844-1853, VCAL, Melbourne, 2014, p.94.
[33] Stephen Morey, op. cit., in the section ‘3.4.9.2 Text of the Gaiggip and notes on the analysis’. On the basis of linguistic analysis, Morey notes: ‘It seems possible that the language of this Gaiggip was either Gippsland or one of the Yuin languages. ‘ I would personally suggest that it was far more likely to have been a Yuin language, and most likely Ngarigu, based on the poor diplomatic relationship with the Gippsland peoples at this time, and the strong possibility of kin and other relations between the various alpine peoples.
[34] William Thomas in Stephens, Volume One, op. cit. For the actual name of the Aboriginal ‘druids,’ which Thomas records as having the name Bullunger-metum (in which the suffix —metum is a cognate of the common alpine suffix —mittung), see Morey, op cit.
[35] William Thomas, in Stephens, Volume One, ibid.
[36] ibid.
[37] William Thomas in ‘Paper No.11 ‘Superior Races’ sent to Duffy on 13 July 1858,’ in Marguerita Stephens, The Journal of William Thomas, Assistant Protector of the Aborigines of Port Phillip & Guardian to the Aborigines of Victoria 1839-1867, Volume Two: 1844 to 1853, VCAL, Melbourne, 2014, page 95, continuation of footnote 49.
[38] William Thomas, ‘Writing’ entitled “Native Encampment”, (The fourth of the papers prepared by William Thomas for Charles Gavan Duffy and sent in on 25/5/58. [Box 3 item 1/R3f59], Mitchell Library) in Marguerita Stephens, The Journal of William Thomas, Assistant Protector of the Aborigines of Port Phillip & Guardian to the Aborigines of Victoria 1839-1867, Volume Two: 1844 to 1853, VCAL, Melbourne, 2014, page 94, footnote 49.
[39] ibid.
[40] ibid.
[41] REPORT SELECT COMMITTEE OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL — THE ABORIGINES; John Ferres, Government Printer, Melbourne, 1858-9, p.29.
[42] Journals of George Augustus Robinson (ed. Ian Clark), entry for: Monday, 15 February 1841.
[43] Letter from George Faithfull to Lieutenant-Governor LaTrobe, Letter number No. 27. in Thomas Francis McBride (ed.) Letters from Victorian Pioneers, A Series of Papers on the Early Occupation of the Colony, the Aborigines, etc, Addressed by Victorian Pioneers to His Excellency Charles Joseph LaTrobe, Esq, Lieutenant Governor of the Colony of Victoria, Trustees of the Public Library of Victoria, Melbourne, 1898.
Faithfull describes the site of the shooting as being on an ‘anabranch’ of the River, which when correlated with stockman James Howard’s account (footnote below), would appear to be Hurdle Creek on the King River.
[44] ‘SETTLEMENT IN THE KELLY COUNTRY (BY OUR SPECIAL REPORTER),’ The Argus, 13 September, 1883, p.9.
[45] ‘COUNTRY NEWS. (From various Correspondents) THE OVENS,’ The Sydney Herald, 8 July 1840, p.1
[46] Kay Robertson, Myrtleford, Gateway to the Alps, Rigby, Adelaide, 1973, p.98.

This is original written content that is copyright protected to ©Jacqui Durrant, 2019. You are welcome to share links to this blog, but please do not use the content elsewhere without permission. Thank you!

First people of Beechworth — answering some criticisms

04 Wednesday Dec 2019

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Aboriginal, Beechworth, King Billy, Squatters, Tangambalanga, Uncategorized, Wangaratta, Yackandandah

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Diane Barwick, Gary Presland, George Augustus Robinson, Ian Clarke, Marie Hansen Fels, Norman Tindale, Pallanganmiddang, Pangerang, Waveroo, Waywurru

WARNING: Visitors should be aware that this blog post includes images and names of deceased people that may cause sadness or distress, particularly to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. In particular, I acknowledge the Aboriginal ancestors whose words are quoted within this post, with the greatest respect for their legacy.

This post relates to my previous post on the Pallanganmiddang — First Peoples of Beechworth and Beyond, addressing some potential criticisms of the research. Be warned: it is technical!

In my last post, I stated that from a historical perspective, the first people of the Beechworth region, and in fact a much broader area, were a local area group (in anthropological language, an ‘areal-moiety’ grouping, ie: belonging to an area, with a moiety attached), called the Pallangan-middang. The Pallangan-middang spoke a unique language which was neither Pangerang/Yorta Yorta, nor Dhudhuroa. They also appear in multiple detailed references in one historical source (the journals of George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector of Aborigines) as a sub-set of a larger group called the Waywurru (Waveroo).

Since the last post was published, I have has some suggestions which in turn constitute arguments to the effect that I (and others) have misinterpreted the historical source materials. The body of this argument is that when Europeans talked to Aboriginal people and then tried to write down what they said, they got it wrong. One reason they got it wrong is because Aboriginal languages are difficult for Europeans to interpret and transcribe. Another reason is that they didn’t understand Aboriginal culture and frequently misinterpreted things. As a professional historian who trained at a university (La Trobe University), whose history department was internationally known for its ‘ethnographic history’, I was exposed to individual historians who made it their life’s work to grapple specifically with these kinds of historical problems. In a nutshell, these issues of cross-cultural interpretation do constitute real problems for historians. No sound historian would negate that argument, and would always seek strategies to attempt to compensate for the possibility of such misreadings.

Conversely, to consign to the ‘rubbish bin’ written historical source materials just because they were created by European colonisers, would mean loosing a lot of valuable information. Very few scholars of Victorian Aboriginal history (Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal), would consign the massive journals of writers like George Augustus Robinson or William Thomas, written mainly in the 1840s, to the bin — no matter how offensive some of the actions of these individuals with regards to Aboriginal people were. All historians should be suspicious of what their sources have to say, and attempt to ‘test them’ using historiographical practices such as cross-referencing, and placing source materials in their correct historical context.

Particularly when talking in a public forum, it is difficult to counter-argue an argument against one’s own work without actually pulling out enormous wads of source materials in order to demonstrate to lay people in the audience that I have already considered certain potential errors and done my best to compensate for the possibility of these errors. However, I would like to take this opportunity to address four specific arguments which suggest my work is the result of faulty interpretation of the historical source materials. I cannot prevent people from reading primary source materials however they like. However, I can at least respond to criticisms of my own work by explaining how I have gone about some specific points in relation to my interpretation of primary source materials.

Counter argument 1: ‘In the historical records, Pallanganmiddang is just a misspelling of Pangerang. They are the same thing.’

This argument was systematically dismantled by historian Dr Marie Hansen Fels in her monumental report ‘These Singular People — The Ovens Blacks, Supplementary Report, 28 July 1997’ written in response to anthropologist Rod Hagen’s critique of her initial report, produced for the Yorta Yorta Native Title case during the mid-1990s. However, because this report was never published, this argument continues to be raised.

My response to the argument that Pallanganmiddang is a misspelling of Pangerang runs like this: Yes, Europeans did struggle with spelling Aboriginal names and words, and frequently, they spelled the same name or word in several different ways. Aboriginal cultures were oral cultures, and there were no conventional ways of spelling Aboriginals names and words. However, when one sees attempts to write certain words written enough times, one can discern a similarity between these various attempts at spelling, which unifies them.

In Victoria generally, some common issues arise in spelling, which can be easily accounted for, if one is aware of them. The first is to do with the way Europeans struggled to record the sounds ‘P’ and ‘B’ which as a consequence are used interchangeably. Even today, as well as historically, one may often see ‘Pangerang’ written as ‘Bangerang’ (or even Bpangerang), but we are all aware that Pangerang, Bangerang and Bpangerang refer to the same group. Certainly one also finds, in the historical sources, Pallanganmiddang also written a ‘B’ instead of a ‘P’. (The same kid of transposition often occurs with the sounds ‘T’, ‘K’ and ‘Dj’.)

The second issue with spelling is cultural: it seems that the Pallanganmiddang people frequently deployed the Kulin areal-moiety (local area) group suffix ‘—illum’ instead of the north east Victorian alpine areal-moiety (local area) group suffix ‘—mittung’, depending largely on where they were in the landscape. So it is possible to see the name appearing as Pallangan-illum, or, Ballangan-illum, as well as Pallengan-mittung. (One also sees the second ‘a’ replaced with an ‘i’, and the third ‘a’ replaced with an ‘o’ — especially in geographical zones associated with Kulin peoples. So one sees Ballingo-illum, Ballingon-illum, or variations of this.)

In fact, we do see a lot of spelling variation in Robertson of the name Pallanganmiddang. However, he does spell Pangerang rather consistently throughout as ‘Pingerine’. Take, for instance, Robinson’s first visit into North East Victoria. On 20 April 1840, at Brodribb’s station on the Broken River (near Benalla), he meets a number of Aboriginal men, who may be passing through, or may be station workers. He writes:

‘We ascertained these natives belong to or were parts of three tribes [in fact, he goes on to list four, but I will list the two relevant to this discussion!]:
1. Bal.lin.go.yal.lums, a section of the Ovens tribe, called I believe Wee.her.roo, so says Mr Brodribb (queri)
…
4. And the Pine.ger.rines, a large tribe inhabiting the country on the south and south west banks of the Murry.’

From this excerpt we can see that Robinson has clearly met two different groups, the Ballingoyallums and the Pinegerines.

The following February (1841) Robinson revisits north east Victoria, and on the 9th and 10th of February, he meets with a large mixed group of Aboriginal people on Bontharambo station (just out of Wangaratta). He sits down and records their names, gender, ages, what groups they belong to, and sometimes their kin relationship. On the 23 February 1841, he writes down his findings. He records the names of around 15 people who are specifically ‘Pallengoillum’ or ‘Pallengomitty,’ belonging to the ‘Waveroo’ or ‘Wave.veroo’ ‘nation’, plus another 10 or so generally Waveroo people. He also records about 28 ‘Pinegerine’ people. (As an aside, Robinson also records roughly equal numbers of Wiradjuri and Taungurung people on the same site on that occasion.) Insofar as I can see, Robinson has interviewed in this instance, around 95 people, and within that large group he has clearly identified people who are ‘Pallengoillum’/’Pallengomitty’ (Pallanganillum/Pallanganmiddang) as well as people who are ‘Pinegerine’ (Pangerang). The two groups are clearly identified, with exceptional clarity, as separate groups.

Counter argument 2: ‘Waywurru is really a misspelling of the Melbourne broader group Woiwurrung.’

This could easily be a legitimate concern. The argument runs along the lines that when Robinson was in north east Victoria, he was meeting a lot of Woiwurrung people who were in transit, using the Port Phillip route (ie: the modern day Hume Freeway, which was the original overlanding track), as a means of travel. Thus he was meeting Woiwurrung in North East Victoria, and he recorded them as ‘Waywurru’ (in fact, variations of this spelling such as ‘Wee-her-roo,’ ‘Waveroo’ and so on).

This seems plausible until one realises that Robinson had spent a lot of time in Melbourne around the Woiwurrung and that he could identify this language when he heard it spoken. However, in north east Victoria, he clearly treats the ‘Wee-her-roo,’ or ‘Wave-veroo’ as a new and unknown group, which he has to learn about. Whenever Robinson was unsure about something, and knew he had to continue to check the facts, he made a note in his journal to himself to ‘queri’ the statement.

When, on Monday 20 April 1840, Robinson met some ‘Bal.lin.go.yal.lums, a section of the Ovens tribe, called I believe Wee.her.roo, so says Mr Brodribb (queri)’ , Robinson made a note to ‘query’ further about this group.

On Thursday 23 April 1840, Robinson wrote, ‘The natives at Dockers [ie: Bontharambo station] prostitute their women in like manner as do many other tribes: Goulburn, Waverong; Barrable, &c.’

Here we can see that within the same short period of time (four days), Robinson has chosen to identify ‘Wee.her.roo’ and ‘Waverong’ separately. Dr Ian Clark has accounted for the different ways in which Robinson wrote Waywurru: Wee.her.roo, Way.u.roo Wee.er.roo; Way.you.roo, Waveroo, Wavaroo, Wavoroo, Wave.veroo, Way.you.roo, Wayerroo (Ian Clarke, ‘Aboriginal languages in north-east Victoria – the status of ‘Waveru’ reconsidered,’ Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues, 2011, Vol. 14(4): 2-22). Critically, Robinson only used these spellings in the geographical context of north east Victorian locations.

We can compare this with the way Robinson wrote Woiwurrung, frequently as ‘Waverong’ (eg: on 18 July 1839, 11 October 1840, 16 November 1840 as examples) and ‘Way.you.rong’ (1 June 1840). (There are probably more examples but I do not have time to scan the 800+ journal pages I have before me.) Moreover Robinson’s geographical context for using ‘Waverong’ never applies to north east Victoria (ie: country north of the Broken River).

It is easy to see that Robinson differentiated between Waywurru by creating the sound ‘—varoo’ on the end of the word — a linguistic gesture he retained exclusively for a group in north east Victoria; while in the case of Waverong, he created the sound ‘—erong’ on the end of the word, and used this in context appropriate to an area and people we now comprehend as Woi-wurrung.

One could argue that this differentiation is due to a dialectical difference between say Melbourne and North East Victoria, but that it still refers to the same group of people. That argument comes unstuck when one considers that none of the people whom Robinson associates with Wavaroo claim any connection to Melbourne: Quite the opposite; several openly claim specific connection to areas of land in north east Victoria. The same cannot be said for anyone associated with Waverong. There still exists a remote possibility that Pallanganmiddang were a non-contiguous areal moiety of ‘Woi-wurrung’, and that they pronounced it ‘Waveroo’. However it would require a lot of evidence to establish this in concrete terms, as a non-contiguous areal moiety speaking an entirely different language doesn’t fit the broader pattern of Kulin society.

Counter argument 3: ‘There is only one historical source for the term Waywurru, therefore its existence might be just the faulty perception of one person.’

In his paper published in the journal Aboriginal History (Volume 25, 2005, pp.216-227), titled ‘Ethnographic information and anthropological interpretation in a Native Title claim: the Yorta Yorta experience’, anthropologist Rod Hagen stated that with regards to the term ‘Waveroo,’ aside from the journal of George Augustus Robinson, ‘No other 19th century commentator makes mention of them.’ While there is not much evidence for ‘Waveroo’ as a term, it is easy to demonstrate Hagen’s statement as inaccurate. There are two other contemporary sources (squatters Benjamin Barber and David Reid) who agree with George Augustus Robinson, referring to a ‘Weeroo’ or ‘Weiro’ broad group in the area of north east Victoria north of the Broken River and south of the Murray River (Letter from Benjamin Barber, in ‘Replies to the following Circular Letter on the subject of the Aborigines, addressed to gentlemen residing too remote from Sydney, to expect the favour of their personal attendance upon the Committee, in Select Committee Enquiry into Immigration, NSW Legislative Council, 1841; and David Reid in ‘Aboriginal Population 1860, The Argus, Friday 5 October, 1860. p.5). While Barber’s knowledge was mainly in relation to the area of Barnawatha Station, Reid had lived on the Ovens at what is now Tarrawingee, and had also lived in Yackandandah, and consequently his statement would reflect this experience. Three independent sources is not a substantial historical record compared to other large groups such as the Wiradjuri or Taungurung, but the paucity of information about them must be contextualised by the fact that the Waywurru/Waveroo were a comparatively small group which bore the brunt of violence from numerous overlanding parties travelling to Port Phillip, as well as violent squatters who settled in north east Victoria, all through the late 1830s and early 1840s.

Counter argument 4: ‘There are old maps, and these maps show the Pangerang on country where you say the Pallanganmiddang should be.’

Another criticism of my work on the Pallanganmiddang is that what I have written and describe doesn’t accord well with maps of Aboriginal Victoria. Some of them, like Norman Tindale’s map of 1940, revised in 1974, are very famous and well-regarded. Unfortunately, maps have a power to them that people don’t often question, but one has to remember that maps of Aboriginal Victoria are based on historical information.

The criticism of my work on Pallanganmiddang could be expressed more specifically as ‘Durrant’s work does not accord well with maps of Aboriginal Victoria produced before the 1990s.’ ‘Why discard maps produced before the 1990s?’ I hear you ask. ‘Surely old maps are more accurate?’ I hear you say. The simple answer is that in the 1990s, historians and linguists suddenly found themselves in possession of information about Aboriginal Victoria recorded far earlier than the oldest maps of Aboriginal Victoria (for instance, Brough Smyth’s map which appeared in his 1878 book The Aborigines of Victoria: With Notes Relating to the Habits of the Natives of Other Parts of Australia and Tasmania.), and they began using this ‘new’ (in fact, much older) information to produce new maps. In particular, the Victorian Aboriginal Languages Corporation commissioned Dr Ian Clark to produce a new map, based on the new archival materials which had come to light. These new maps accord far more closely with the historical picture that I have painted of the Pallanganmiddang local group of the Waywurru broad group.

There is, in fact, a backstory behind the creation of these ‘new maps based on old material’:

By the early 1980s, the late, great anthropologist Diane Barwick (1938-1986), was dissatisfied with the Victorian section of Tindale’s maps, and was trying to unravel the issue of which Aboriginal groups occupied different parts of Victoria. She’d tackled some of Victoria, and published a major article titled ‘Mapping the Past, Part I’. She was in the middle of working on a new paper devoted to North East Victoria (intended as ‘Mapping the Past, Part II’) when she died tragically and suddenly of a brain haemorrhage. However, this is what Barwick had to say about Norman Tindale’s mapping in 1984, about two years before she died:

‘The best-known map of Victorian ‘tribes’ is the continental ‘tribal map’ published in 1940 by South Australian Museum biologist and ethnologist Norman B. Tindale, which was explicitly “based principally on recent fieldwork with additions from the literature”. Dr Tindale’s unparalleled record of ethnographic publications dates back to 1925, but it appears that the Victorian fieldwork which shaped this map was undertaken when he and Dr Joseph Birdsell were co-leaders of the 1938/39 Harvard-Adelaide Universities Anthropological Expedition. Tindale’s 1940 tribal labels were admittedly the basis for more recent maps of language distribution in Victoria — with some amendments resulting from linguistic research during the 1960s and/or consultation of the original notes compiled by amateur ethnographers A.W. Howitt, R.H. Mathews and John Mathew, which were not accessible for scholarly study until the 1970s. Tindale’s 1974 revision of his 1940 map incorporated available information from recent research but necessarily relied upon published material, mainly the writings of Howitt, Curr, Smyth, R.H. Mathews (whose reliability he had questioned in 1940 but now acclaimed), and the few accessible Protectorate records from the 1840s. His tentative boundaries in central and northeastern Victoria were admittedly deduced from discrepant published sources…’ (Barwick, Diane E. Mapping the Past: An Atlas of Victorian Clans 1835-1904 [online]. Aboriginal History, Vol. 8, 1984: 100-131. This reference: pp.100-101. My emphasis added.)

What Barwick was saying is that, with regards to North East Victoria, Tindale’s first map was compiled principally from his interpretation of four historical sources, written by men who were contemporary to each other: R. Brough Smyth, Edward Curr, Alfred Howitt and R.H. Mathews (and some of his own research conducted at places such as Cumeragunga). At a later date, Tindale had access to some field notes and manuscript materials left by some of these same men. Each of these men had his own distinctive limitations, and when their work was combined, there were discrepancies between them which were difficult to reconcile. There were a number of professional jealousies between them, but perhaps the biggest limitation of their work as a whole is that each man had laboured under the misapprehension that Aboriginal people would soon be ‘extinct’, which led them to believe that if they simplified or fudged some information for publication, that no Aboriginal people would be around to question their work at a later date. They were wrong.

By 1986, the year of her death, Diane Barwick had credible reasons for thinking she could revise the map covering North East Victoria on Normal Tindale’s by now famous map of Aboriginal tribes. ‘Why not get Tindale to do it?’ I hear you ask. —Tindale was 86 years old. ‘Why did Barwick think she could do better?’ I hear you ask. — Let me reply first with some rhetorical questions: What if some absolutely critical sources of information had simply vanished from the historical record, only to reappear at a later date? What if some source materials previously inaccessible were suddenly entered into a local public institution and made available to researchers? This is precisely what happened with regards to information about Aboriginal history in North East Victoria. Where there had been, at first, slender and contradictory evidence, there came a pivotal moment that changed everything: and this a happened when the journal of G.A. Robinson was returned to Australia from Great Britain!

George Augustus Robinson was the Chief Protector of Aborigines in the Port Phillip District, from 1839 to 1849. Robinson was a prolific writer, and kept a daily journal as he travelled around the Port Phillip district (in what would become Victoria in 1851). His observations about Aboriginal people were made on location, usually written on the same day, and he often conversed with Aboriginal people and even recorded their names (both Aboriginal and ‘conferred’ white names). Robinson visited the northeast of Victoria in 1840, January-February 1841, 1842 and 1844, and recorded a considerable amount of information about the people he met.

Historian Dr Marie Hansen Fels has lucidly described the impact that having access to Robinson’s journal had on historians:

‘The return to Australia of Robinson’s material in 1949 (he took his papers back to England with him in 1852 and there they remained, inaccessible to scholars for nearly 100 years) transformed the nature of Aboriginal research in Victoria. We no longer had to rely on 19th century collectors of information with all the dangers of their filling in the gaps in knowledge with speculation (Howitt is a good example of this – in the 1904 edition of Native Tribes of South Eastern Australia he states on page 54 that ‘I have not been able to obtain any information as to the tribes occupying the course of the Murray between the Bangarang and Albury, or on the Ovens River lower than the “Buffalo Mountains”,’ but this absence of information does not prevent him from conjecture about them on page 101.)’ (Marie Hansen Fels, ‘These Singular People…’ p.8)

There is, however, something that Fels fails to mention — and that is that Robinson’s handwriting was atrocious. Deciphering his journal notes would only ever be a labour of love for a handful of the most diligent historians, anthropologists and linguists, like Diane Barwick and Fels herself. Thus, even up to the latter part of the 1980s, the Robinson journals remained an under-utilised resource. Historian and archaeologist Dr Gary Presland began transcribing some parts of Robinson’s journal. As soon as he did, it seems that other historians started borrowing his transcripts. In 1989, Presland wrote:

‘…the journal has proved to be an invaluable and, in some cases, unique source of data. Ironically however, although it has been used widely and is informing an increasing number of studies, it remains substantially unknown and untapped. In part this is due to the sheer physical volume of the source (the manuscript takes up more than one shelf metre). It is due also in part to the difficulties of reading Robinson’s poor handwriting. To a limited extent this difficulty has been lessened but more needs to be done towards publishing this invaluable source of information.’ (Gary Presland, ‘The Journals of George Augustus Robinson’, The LaTrobe Journal, No 43, Autumn 1989, p.12).

In fact, it wasn’t until Dr Ian Clark (of Federation University at Ballarat) undertook the mammoth, almost monk-like task of transcribing Robinson’s journals in their entirety, initially publishing them in sections from 1996-2000, that the average researcher had ready access to this incredible storehouse of information. There are copies of Clark’s monumental work available for purchase, but they are still very expensive. (In north east Victoria, the only public copy is at Charles Sturt University’s Albury campus library, which has an annoyingly incomplete set of Clark’s transcriptions. The current complete volumes that I use are on loan to me from a generous local person!)

To recap once again: Tindale’s 1974 map did not make use of the journal of George Augustus Robinson. Diane Barwick knew the Robinson material. She knew that in the 1840s, Robinson had repeatedly met and talked with numerous Waveroo people at places like Wangaratta, Oxley and Albury-Wodonga. Robinson even recorded a vocabulary of the Pallanganmiddang (Waywurru) language in north east Victoria — a language which would later go on to be studied by linguists in the 1990s. Clearly, these people, the Pallanganmiddang people of the Waveroo ‘nation’ (as Robinson described them) existed, but were entirely absent from Tindale’s map. Barwick was also carefully reviewing other resources, such as Alfred Howitt’s field notes and correspondences (held between three different institutions, but now available on line here). She had also examined the unpublished manuscript notes of R.H. Mathews (manuscript material in the National Library of Australia catalogued as MS8006), rather than his publications, and learned that his ‘Minyambuta group’ overlapped a little too suspiciously with Pallanganmiddang/Waveroo (she surmised the Minyambuta was an exonym for Pallanganmiddang language), and extended geographically as far as Wangaratta, which once again, was at odds with Tindale’s map. And so, she had started re-mapping the northeast Victorian section of Tindale’s map. And then before she was finished, she died. Vale Diane Barwick.

Diane Barwick’s work laid the ground work for Dr Ian Clarke, who had also transcribed George Augustus Roninson’s papers, to substantially revise the map of Aboriginal groups in North East Victoria. Clarke did not use Barwick’s manuscript papers (now in the State Library of Victoria) uncritically. However, he seems to have used them as a starting point for creating a new map based on early and credible documents such as George Augustus Robinson’s journal (to which we can now add the journals and papers of Assistant Chief Protector of Aborigines, William Thomas). My work accords well with Clarke’s work not because I am drawing directly from it, but because we are both using a storehouse of primary source materials far more substantial than what Norman Tindale ever had access to. And if Tindale was alive today, I am sure he would revise his 1974 map based on new sources, just as he had previously revised his 1940 map after new sources came to light.

This is original written content that is copyright protected to ©Jacqui Durrant, 2019. You are welcome to share links to this blog, but please do not use the content elsewhere without permission. Thank you!

Sweet Damper on the Little River

24 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Aboriginal, Convicts, Squatters, Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Aboriginal Massacre, Arsenic Poisoning, Dederang Mound, Kiewa River, Sweet Damper

Imagine yourself in 1839, having just eaten a good meal by the side of a creek running into the Kiewa River, in north east Victoria: a safe place you’ve known your entire life. Soon you will be dead.

Mound at House Creek, Dederang (Photograph: Megan Carter, 2019)

Imagine yourself in 1839, having just eaten a good meal by the side of a creek in north east Victoria: a safe place you’ve known your entire life. Suddenly you start to experience severe stomach pain and cramping, as well as diarrhea and vomiting; not regular vomiting, but the kind that contains blood. Soon you are urinating blood too. Those around you — your friends, family, your children and elders — are suffering the same. Before you can try to help them, your condition deteriorates into convulsions and confusion. You finally collapse into a coma. Soon you will be dead.

There is a story among locals in the Kiewa Valley about a strange mound on the banks of House Creek at Dederang, in which the mound is described as a mass grave of Aboriginal people, buried after a massacre committed by early settlers using arsenic-laced damper. To my knowledge the story has appeared in print twice; the first of which was in Desmond Martin’s local history book, Tale of Two Cities. Martin wrote,

‘In addition there is the story of the 180 Aboriginals allegedly buried beneath the two pine trees beside House Creek, south of Dederang, on the old Woodside property… Way back in the foundation years people whose names seem to be unknown moved out onto the back of the run to muster cattle, leaving the woman of the house alone except for a house gin or two. The local tribe cannily paid her a visit and got into the store room as she was getting them a handout of flour etc to keep them peaceable. That night they all had a big feed up down by the creek, and in the morning only a few of the 200 or so visitors were still alive. The rest had been poisoned by the damper made from the station flour. If this is true then it is most unlikely that the unfortunate lady had anything to do with doping the dough. Her visitors probably grabbed a tin of arsenic, or possibly strychnine as these two poisons were common to most properties in the early days, thinking it was “sugarbag”, shared it up, and everybody mixed a fine damper that contained poison instead of sugar. The returning men are said to have buried all the bodies under the mound, and later planted the pines over them.’ [1]

Only recently, the same story has resurfaced in an new, locally published book, Squatters, Selectors and Settlers, Dederang, Gundowring and Monaghan’s Bridge Pioneering District, by Dulcie Smith with Mary Cardwell:

‘One story is told that a tribe of Indigenous people called at a homestead near House Creek. The settler’s wife was there alone and frightened. Her husband and his cattlemen were away working. She deemed it best to give the visitors the good quality flour they demanded. It was possible that there was arsenic mixed in the flour. Around 180 people died where they had their feed. The returning bushmen buried them and their grave is thought to be the hillock. This is where corroborees were thought to happen. “Through the dark branches of the pine trees, the wind groans dirges for the people buried below.”‘ This information is attributed to ‘Alvara McKillop and other anonymous locals’. [2]

This is one of those stories that, considering contextual evidence, seems more than likely to be based on a real event. However there exist some elements which are suspicious. Firstly, it is unlikely that returning stockmen would have gone to the trouble of creating such a huge mound in order to bury these bodies. The mound is clearly unnatural, and if is wasn’t created by stockmen, it may well have been of pre-existing Aboriginal origins. Whatever the case, this mound has been associated with Aboriginal people at least since the late nineteenth century. While touring the region in 1886, James Stirling reported that:

‘At Dederang we noticed a peculiarly rounded hillock at the junction of a small creek… We regretted that we had not time to examine it, but our driver informed us it was locally known as a blackfellow’s mound, one of those monuments which remain of a fast expiring race’. [3]

Secondly, the story is structured to absolve early settlers of murder by attributing the 180 deaths to an accidental poisoning, for which a frightened white woman and the Aboriginal people themselves (Waywurru and/or Dhudhuroa) are responsible. This too, is highly unlikely, since there is enough evidence that European settlers in north east Victoria did deliberately poison Aboriginal people.

One highly suggestive piece of circumstantial evidence comes in the form of an ‘early warning,’ that the first pastoralists in north-east Victoria had either started, or were about to start, deliberately killing local Aboriginal people with sweet damper — damper laced with sugar to mask the taste of arsenic. In June 1838, a pastoralist based in Berrima, in the New South Wales southern highlands, wrote a letter to the editor of Sydney-based paper, The Colonist, complaining that the Government had not given mounted police discretionary power to shoot Aboriginal people. Written only months after the Faithfull Massacre at Benalla, in which Aboriginal people had attacked and killed a number of shepherds, the letter warned that in the absence of police power to kill Aboriginal people they deemed dangerous, pastoralists were about to take matters into their own hands:

‘Since the Colonial Government, by virtually tying down the hands of the party of mounted policemen despatched towards the Hume [i.e.: Murray] River, has refused to afford to the proprietors of sheep and cattle stations on the Port Phillip Road, the necessary protection against the aggressions of the blacks, allow me to call the attention of those gentlemen who, like myself, have sent live stock to the Murray and its vicinity, to the expediency of forming a sort of militia corps, consisting of every hut-keeper, watchman, and stockman, able to shoulder a musket, in order that we may thus be enabled to repel force by force.’

The writer reported that Aboriginal people had ‘recently committed two more murders; one of these unfortunate victims was a shepherd belonging to a gentleman (Mr. Bowman), who resides in this neighbourhood; … I have been informed on good authority, that stockmen and others have often tried the experiment of mixing up arsenic in a damper, placed where the blacks were in the habit of frequenting. No atrocities on the part of the blacks, can in my opinion justify the whites in resorting to such treacherous means of retaliation. Assuredly the end does not justify the means. But what can they (the whites) do?’ … What I would here suggest is, that, until the government see the necessity of giving the mounted police already despatched a discretionary power to shoot a few of the blacks who commit outrages among the stations, the proprietors themselves should, by forming a militia corps, follow the example of Major Mitchell. It is, I admit, truly distressing to be driven to this necessity. But it appears to me that there is no other alternative. … However paradoxical the assertion may sound, I am convinced that the most humane course we can adopt as regards the majority of the blacks themselves, would be to shoot a few of their ring-leaders when detected in the act of committing their outrages. It must come to this at last. There is no other way of convincing them of the superiority of the whites.’

The letter concluded with a plea to the Government to let mounted police shoot specific Aboriginal people, lest the pastoralists turn to the indiscriminate wholesale murder of Aboriginal people by arsenic:

‘Let the Government only act with vigour tempered with humanity, and these outrages will soon be put an end to. Treat the blacks as rational beings, and their natural sense of justice will make them hear reason. Treat them as wild beasts, and they will continue wild to the last. The arsenic affair is horrific! It makes one’s blood curdle!’ [4]

There is no doubt that the author of the letter was well-informed concerning matters in north east Victoria. He already had stock in the area, which means that he would have — either as an individual or partner — held a license to departure herds and flocks and had registered a ‘run’ with the nearest Crown Lands Commissioner. He also resided at Berrima on the New South Wales southern highlands, which was the geographical base from which almost all of the early pastoralists of north east Victoria established themselves. He refers to William Bowman, whose pastoral leases took in the area from Everton on the Ovens River, through ‘Bowman’s Forest’ and the rest of the Murmungee Basin to Beechworth and country as far as Wooragee. He also suggests that pastoralists should ‘follow the example of Major Mitchell’, which can only be a reference to the fact that Mitchell and his party on their ‘Third Expedition of Discovery’ had killed a number of Aboriginal people at what has become known as the ‘Mount Dispersion massacre’ in 1836. Mitchell only received a reprimand for leading the massacre, having claimed self-defence.

The Government never did grant its mounted police powers to shoot Aboriginal people: As subjects of the Crown, Aboriginal people had to be arrested for crimes, and brought to trial like everyone else. Likewise, as subjects of the Crown, neither was it ever legal to murder Aboriginal people — but this didn’t stop the early European pastoralists. When stockmen were implicated in the mass killing of mainly women, children and old men at Myall Creek, the Government committed them to trial, and hanged seven of the perpetrators in November 1838. However, instead of ending the killings; this only meant that pastoralists devoted greater efforts to covering up their wanton acts of murder.

In his letter of 1853, squatter George Faithful of Oxley Plains would recall of these early years of European settlement, ‘The Government … threatened to hang any one who dared to shoot a black, even in protection of his property, and appointed Protectors to search about the country for information as to the destruction of the natives. These gentlemen resorted to the most contemptible means to gain information against individuals, whom the trumpet-tongue of falsehood had branded as having destroyed many of these savages. This, instead of doing good, did much evil. People formed themselves into bands of alliance and allegiance to each other, and then it was the destruction of the natives really did take place.’ [5]

The evidence that pastoralists used arsenic-laced damper to kill Aboriginal people in north east Victoria at this time, doesn’t name the individuals responsible, but it does exist. Assistant Aboriginal Protectors employed under the Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate (mainly religious men, not given to ‘trumpet tongued falsehoods’) knew too well what was going on in north east Victoria — where the colonial authorities had opted not to post a regional Protector, resolutely refusing to do so even after Chief Protector George Augustus Robinson requested it. [6]

In June 1839, not even a year after its initial settlement by Europeans, Assistant Protector of Aborigines for the Goulburn district, James Dredge, recorded the prevalence of mass poisonings with ‘sweet damper’. [7] Assistant Protector of Aborigines for the Melbourne area, William Thomas, also recorded in March 1839 that Aboriginal people on the Broken and Ovens Rivers had been ‘put out in this way.’ [8]

Although Thomas does not specifically note the Kiewa River, it is worth pointing out that the Kiewa was at this time barely known to most Europeans, as it lay quite some distance off the main over-landing route from Sydney to the Port Phillip district, and only later did it come to be referred to by them as ‘Little River’. A letter from his stockman to pastoral lisencee John Jobbins, dated from 2 October 1839, locates Jobbins’ run Towangah (Tawonga) Station as being ‘near the head of the ‘Ovens’,’ [9] demonstrating that people at this time were generally unable to find an appropriate geographical descriptor for the Kiewa Valley. Thus when William Thomas writes that arsenic was being used on the Broken and Ovens Rivers, he could well also mean the Kiewa.

If we consider sometime after the Faithfull Massacre in April 1838 up until mid 1839, as a likely timeframe for the massacre on the Kiewa River, this allows us to speculate on which of the settlers in the district at that time could have been the perpetrators. There were, at this time, four stations (pastoral runs) in the immediate area: Kergunyah (‘Kergunnnia’) station, held by John Morrice, Robert Wylde and David MacKenzie, and managed by George Kinchington (who arrived in June 1838 with his wife and family, and would later go on to hold ‘Thilingananga’ station at what would become Bruarong) [10]; ‘Gundowring’ Station on the opposite side of the Kiewa River, held by George Hume Barber, and run by his young son Charles Barber, and their manager Frederick Street (who was a brother-in-law of George Kinchington) [11]; ‘Dederang’ Station, held by absentee pastoralist James Roberts of the property Currawang (near Young), and run by stockmen (one of whom we only know as ‘old Tom’); and finally ‘Towangah’ (Tawonga) Station, held by John Jobbins and managed on his behalf by stockmen whose names are unknown. [12] (*Since first writing this, I have discovered that Dederang station was superintended by John Wingrove. [12b]) All stations would have had a number of assigned or ticket-of-leave convict labourers.

Of the four station-holders, emancipated convict John Jobbins is the only one with a proven record of killing, or inciting his station labourers, to kill Aboriginal people, [13] but this does not lessen the chance that the other station holders and/or their managers were responsible for this mass poisoning. Of the three men who held Kergunyah Station, it seems the Reverends Wylde and MacKenzie (both school teachers at Australian College in Sydney) were merely investors, while only John Morrice was hands-on (and even then, perhaps only occasionally, as he lived at Sutton Forest on the New South Wales southern highlands, with his wife Jane, the daughter of Yackandandah’s first European settler James Osborne). Morrice would have been no stranger to the mentality of racism and brutality: his Scottish-born father had been a slave-owning tea planter in Jamaica. [14] While avoiding naming anyone specifically, Reverend David MacKenzie recounted the use of arsenic to murder Aboriginal people in his 1845 book The Emigrant’s Guide; or Ten Years’ Practical Experience in Australia [15]. MacKenzie’s comments indicate that at the very least he was familiar with the practice of poisoning Aboriginal people. Furthermore, his comments also illustrate that — particularly after the prosecution of men for the Myall Creek massacre — this method was used in preference to shooting, because it was harder to prove Aboriginal deaths by poisoning as actual murder: one could, as the oral history stories from the Kiewa Valley suggest, always blame the frightened wife of a stockman, and the Aboriginal people themselves.

We cannot point directly to anyone who was responsible for poisoning Aboriginal people in the Kiewa Valley, but we can think about the mentalities that went with such an act. It is likely there are still descendants of some early settlers possibly implicated in the murder of local Aboriginal people in the Kiewa Valley, still living locally. It could be distressing for some of these people to imagine that their ancestors were possibly involved in such horrific acts of murder. And yet, the acknowledgement of atrocities needs to happen for the descendants of the Aboriginal people who survived, and for the wellbeing of us all.

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Don’t mention the ‘C’ word.

08 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by Jacqui Durrant in Aboriginal, Beechworth, Convicts, Squatters, Uncategorized, Wangaratta

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Ben Barber, Benjamin Warby, Charles Cropper, Convict Ship Brittania, David Reid, Dhudhuroa, George Edward Mackay, George Grey, John Chisholm, Joseph Docker, Mogullumbidj, Mount Dispersion Massacre, Pelican Lagoon, Sir Thomas Mitchell, Waywurru, William Brodribb

Lately I’ve been wondering what kinds of people were living around the Beechworth area when gold was first discovered in early 1852. By this time, the local Aboriginal peoples had been reduced to small bands of survivors who had witnessed an horrific genocide of their families and clansmen and women — a genocide wrought by the first European settlers. While it cannot be said that every single white settler was directly involved in this genocide, the killers were thick among them — and so it’s worthwhile asking, in a broad sense, who were these people? The answer is, in fact, reasonably simple; even though generations of local historians almost never mention it.

Image: courtesy National Museum of Australia.

WARNING: Visitors should be aware that this blog post includes subject matter that may cause sadness or distress, particularly to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

While researching this period of early European invasion and settlement of North East Victoria (broadly mid-1830s to mid-1840s, although most of the settlement happened in a single year — 1838), I’ve come across a number of glaring ‘myth-conceptions’, which are perpetrated in just about every history book concerning the region. It’s perhaps understandable how such errors came about: the well-to-do early European settlers who continued to stay living in the region and who went on to have descendants who in turn stayed locally, became the people who were remembered best in local histories. (If you read local history, you’ll be familiar with names like David Reid and Thomas Mitchell). As a consequence, their experiences were taken as indicative of the whole picture of early European settlement in North East Victoria. And yet, numerically, these men were very much in the minority.

Conversely, the people whose involvement in settling the North East Victorian region was either comparatively brief, or those who did not go on to become ‘pillars’ of local society, were barely remembered at all. Thus local history became slanted in favour of the ‘stayers’, who would be forever memorialised as ‘our pioneers’ — as if the only early settlers of the region were free men who came here of their own volition, with the ‘heroic’ intention of single-handedly converting ‘virgin’ countryside into productive grazing land. To say that this picture is at odds with the truth on numerous counts is an understatement.

Several of the largest misconceptions perpetrated about the early European settlers of North East Victoria are ones of omission, and in this post I will tackle but one of them. To illustrate this point, I will for now avoid narrating historical events, if only to present a simple characterisation by way of examples.

***

It should be obvious that none of the ‘pioneers’ who ‘settled’ North East Victoria (the ‘squatters’ who took out licenses to ‘despature flocks and herds’ on Crown Lands, establishing the first pastoral stations of the region) did so single-handedly. When they first arrived in search of grazing lands, invariably with a few thousand head of sheep and/or hundred head of cattle in tow, they arrived in territory which was already fully occupied by Aboriginal peoples of the region: local groups of the Waywurru (Waveroo), Dhudhuroa, and the so-called ‘Mogullumbidj’ peoples [1]. They not only had to establish head-stations and out-stations from which stock could be managed, but do so while simultaneously dispossessing the original inhabitants. Such a feat could only be managed with the assistance of a labour force.

Each station commonly had a manager or overseer, and various stockmen, shepherds, bullock drivers, and sometimes their wives (who worked as hut-keepers). This workforce, which comprised the majority of non-Aboriginal people in North East Victoria from the late 1830s through to perhaps the gold rush of 1851-2 — people who have remained largely invisible in most local history books — were convicts, comprising either those who had been allocated as ‘assigned servants’ while still serving out their sentences, those who had been given a ‘ticket-of-leave’ (akin to being ‘on parole’), or those who had finished their sentences.

The predominance of convicts can be found in any description of the first overlanding parties to settle in North East Victoria. Among the earliest to attempt to settle were the Faithfull Brothers. After their ‘Convoy of sheep and Cattle’ was attacked and seven men killed by Aborigines at Winding Swamp (Broken River, present-day Benalla), in April 1838, Governor Gipps lamented to Lord Glenelg ‘These men (who were chiefly convicts) did not defend themselves, but ran at the first appearance of their assailants’. [2] The partnership of Morrice, Wilde and McKenzie, who would take up Kergunyah station, was rare among squatters in that they had decided to employ a free man, George Kinchington, as their station manager. Nevertheless, their overlanding party, which arrived with 200 head of cattle on the Murray in June 1838, also had an ‘ex-convict for stockman, and two convict prisoners, one acting as bullock-driver, the other as helper with the cattle.’ [3] Likewise, when David Reid Junior reached the Ovens River on 8 September 1838 (settling on what would become ‘Carraragarmungee’ station), he had been equipped by his father Dr David Reid with 500 head of cattle, 2 bullock wagons and teams and 6 assigned servants. [4]

Not only were members of the convict class to be found among the labourers of the pastoral runs; but emancipated convicts were, on occasion, also to be found as station holders in their own right. Among their number were George Grey and his family, at ‘Pelican Lagoons’ (a small run neighbouring George Faithfull’s, situated in the wedge of land between the Ovens and King Rivers, after which the property ‘The Pelican’ on the Oxley Flats Road is named today). While touring the North East of Victoria in the Autumn of 1840, Chief Protector of Aborigines, George Augustus Robinson, and Assistant Protector James Dredge, met the Greys. Robinson said of them, ‘These people have, I believe, been convicts… They are in middling circumstances and have commenced dairying, but appear not the most efficient’, [5] while Assistant Protector James Dredge, added dryly, that they were ‘a large family, apparently not remarkable for cleanliness or industry.’ [6] Before going to North East Victoria, Grey had operated a station in the Monaro district in association with Benjamin Warby, and it is likely that he came over with cattle from the Monaro to Wangaratta at the same time as, and in association with the Warbys, who took up land at Taminick Plains. [7] While Robinson wrote that, ‘One of the Warby brothers, I have been informed, has been transported for cattle stealing,’ [8] it seems that is it was Benjamin’s father, John Warby, who (with William Deards) had been convicted of stealing two asses in October 1790 and had been sentenced to seven years transportation. [9]

On the face of it, stealing two asses is not the worst crime known to man, but before you gallop away with the romantic notion that most convicts were downtrodden souls cruelly incarcerated for stealing a loaf of bread or a packet of sewing needles, let me impress upon you the findings of eminent academic historian Alan Frost:

‘It is one of the abiding myths of Australian history that many of those sentenced to transportation… were hapless victims of a savage penal code and an uncaring, class-driven society. It seems not to matter how often or with what clarity the real situation is explained… It would be silly to claim that there were never miscarriages of justice, or that harsh penalties were not given for what we should now consider minor offences. … However, the plain fact is that the majority of 18th century convicts sentenced to transportation were convicted of crimes that we continue to consider serious.’ [10]

This is to say, most convicts arrived in Australia after committing either violent crime, theft of a substantial criminal nature (often with threats of violence), or very occasionally, political crimes. For example, on Oxley Plains, one of George Faithfull’s original stockmen (and longest surviving — he would die a centenarian at Edi in the King Valley in 1903), had been transported for beating a man to death in a fist fight. [11]

And like all convicts, these people also had been subjected to a harsh penal system, which may have reinforced their worst tendencies. Squatter George Grey had been given a conditional pardon for what was originally a life sentence (he was an Irish rebel, convicted as a member of the agrarian-terrorist movement, the Defenders), and he also had been given three hundred lashes for his role in an attempted mutiny aboard the convict ship Brittania in 1797 — a voyage which in itself became infamous for the cruelty of its sadistic captain, Thomas Dennott. [12] In other words, the convict servants (and some of the lower-tier squatters) working on the stations of North East Victoria, were people who, for the most part, were either brutal before they hit the penal system, or had been brutalised by it.

Making matters worse, the region’s ‘Border Police’ force had been established ‘on the cheap’ by using soldiers who had been transported from South Africa to New South Wales as convicts. [13]

It’s an unstated fact, but the ability to undertake wanton acts of brutality was a payable skill on frontier. Brutality was of practical use in dispossessing Aboriginal peoples of their land, and many convict labourers were — in their day — notorious for their violent attitudes and actions towards local Aboriginal peoples. Writing many years later of the years 1839-44, during which he had overlanded through Yackandandah, Barwidgee and the King Valley with a group of stockman, James Demarr recalled, ‘the white men had been flowing into this newly-discovered country with their flocks and herds… and many of the men they had brought with them were the scum of the earth, so that collisions with the blacks were inevitable.’ Demarr continued:

‘The blacks were driven away from their ancient positions, their hunting grounds taken possession of, their game either destroyed or driven away, and they themselves driven back into mountain fastnesses; the consequence was the black sort every opportunity of revenge, killing the solitary shepherd and stockman whenever they had the opportunity of doing so, and scattering, and partly destroying the flocks and herds. The settlers retaliated in their own way, and old colonists know what that means. … Many of the settlers were well-disposed towards the blacks, and there were men [i.e.: labourers] also like-minded, but the ruffian element mixed up with them, brought on conflicts with the blacks that the kindly disposed were powerless to prevent.’ [14]

Chief Protector of Aborigines, George Augustus Robinson, and Assistant Protector, James Dredge, were among those who came face-to-face with such ‘ruffian elements’ at ‘Myrhee’ station on the west bank of the King River, owned by absentee squatter John Chisholm (yet another station neighbouring George Faithfull) — ruffian elements which by May Day of 1840 had been inflamed by the fact that a shepherd on their run had been ritually murdered by Aborigines only days before. [15] Robinson wrote, ‘Harry Broadribb, a man who has been a prisoner, acts as overseer.’ [16] Dredge noted with displeasure, ‘His wife got some refreshment for us, but raved an swore awfully against the blacks.’ [17] Robinson provided more detail: ‘Mrs Broadribb is a low hard woman, been I imagine a prisoner. She was not acquainted with us and went on about the blacks in a most strange manner. She would have them all burnt, hung, drowned or any death, provided they were got rid of. She applied the vilest epithets to them and would shower out of volley of abuse upon Broadribb [not her husband Harry, but another squatter, William Brodribb on the Broken River] for harbouring the wretches.’ [18]

Two stockmen who worked for Dr George Edward Mackay at ‘Whorouly’ (on yet another station that bordered George Faithful’s ‘Oxley Plains’), became notorious for their violence towards the Aboriginal population, particularly after another attack made by a band of Aboriginals resulted in the death of one of Whorouly’s stockmen. Writing his anonymous reminiscences for the Border Post in 1875, one old station hand recalled Mackay’s stockman, named Bill Thomas — a ticket-of-leave man, who had served as a bullock driver on two of Major Thomas Mitchell’s expeditions into the interior, including the Third Expedition during which Mitchell and his party killed seven Aborigines near Mount Dispersion. [19] According to this writer in the Border Post, Thomas ‘was a most diabolical fellow – a perfect tiger – who was determined to have his revenge on the natives, and, indeed, there were others amongst us that thirsted for satisfaction. Some advised poison, but Thomas met them with the quotation – “Whose sheddeth man’s blood, by blood shall his blood be shed”.’ [20] Thomas clearly escaped any form of repercussions for his actions, but when word got back to Governor Gipps that ‘acts of cruelty had been committed on the aborigines’ of the Ovens district, none could overlook rumours and suggestions regarding the actions of stockman Ben Reid (no relation to squatter David Reid), whose ‘conduct toward the aborigines was complained of by Robinson’ and who subsequently had his ticket-of-leave cancelled and was returned to Sydney. [21] Ben Reid was no doubt among those who, in squatter Joseph Docker’s words, was responsible for the ‘considerable amount of black men’s blood which has already been shed.’ Robinson’s chief complaint against him was that, ‘Reid has had several collisions with the natives, it is feared many have been of fatal character to the aborigines.’ [22]

***

This characteristic aspect of the early settlement of North East Victoria — it’s settlement in the main either by seasoned absentee pastoralists or by inexperienced young sons of the same, who were in turn supported by a crude if not wholly brutal convict labour force — ranks among the factors which combined to make it possible for the European invaders to kill large numbers of local Aboriginal peoples, and to keep the facts of the matter sufficiently secret from government authorities so that effectively nothing could or would be done to stop it.

It would be disingenuous to suggest that every convict labourer was blood-thirsty and wanted to destroy local Aboriginal people — indeed at least three local squatters Joseph Docker (‘Bontharambo’), Ben Barber (‘Barnawatha’) and for as long as he was there, William Brodribb (who held a station on the Broken River which became known as ‘The Junction’, [and who was no relation to the manager of ‘Myhree’]), were notable for the way in which they all employed local Aboriginal people as labourers in the very early days of ‘settlement’. [23] In the Autumn of 1840, George Augustus Robinson ruminated in his journal on why some stations suffered from what was commonly termed ‘depredations from the blacks,’ including substantial losses from having stock either speared or chased away; whereas other station holders suffered almost no losses of stock at all. ‘Mr Broadrib said yesterday that the blacks had speared more of Mr Faithful’s cattle, than of any other person. … There must be some cause for this’ he pondered. ‘Mr Christie lost one or 200 cattle, yet these people say they never allow blacks to come to their stations.’ Conversely, the stations which employed Aboriginal people, and allowed them to travel and camp on the land, had few problems. [24] All is suggestive of a ‘top down’ attitude being responsible for the treatment of Aborigines: that whereas every station employed a brutal and brutalised labour force, on some stations these convict labourers were encouraged by their employers to slaughter Aboriginal people; whereas on other stations they were encouraged to act towards them with tolerance. And the Aboriginal peoples responded accordingly.

References

[1] Concerning the Waywurru (Waveroo), Dhudhuroa, and so-called ‘Mogullumbidj’ peoples, the best works I have read on the nation-boundaries and naming for these Aboriginal peoples, which take into consideration all previous work on the North East area (E.M. Curr (1883), R.B. Smythe (1878), A. Howitt (1904), R.H. Matthews (1905), N. Tindale (1940, 1974), D. Barwick (1984, plus manuscript material produced shortly before her death in 1986, now held in the State Library Victoria), M.H. Fels (1996, 1997), S. Wesson (2000), et al), are by Dr Ian Clarke. Clark has written his papers with a knowledge of the various professional limitations associated with earlier works — those written especially prior to access to critical primary source materials such as the Journals and collected papers of George Augustus Robinson, the journals of William Thomas, and the private papers of Alfred Howitt.

Clark, Ian, ‘Aboriginal language areas in Northeast Victoria: ‘Mogullumbidj’ reconsidered.’ Victorian Historical Journal, Volume 81 Issue 2 (Nov 2010), 181-192.

Clark, Ian, ‘Aboriginal languages in North-east Victoria – the status of ‘Waveru’ reconsidered’, Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues, 2011, Vol. 14(4): 2-22

Clark, Ian, ‘Dhudhuroa and Yaithmathang languages and social groups in north-east Victoria – a reconstruction,’ Aboriginal History, 2009, VOL 33, pp.201-229.

[2] SIR GEORGE GIPPS TO LORD GLENELG. (Despatch No. 115, per ship Superb; acknowledged by Lord Glenelg, 21st December, 1838.) in: Australian Aborigines: Copies or extracts of despatches relative to the massacre of various Aborigines in Australia, in the year 1838, and respecting the trial of their murderers; compiled by the British Colonial Office, 19 August 1839.

[3] ‘YACKANDANDAH IN 1838. SOME REMINISCENCES. BY MR. GEORGE KINCHINGTON,’ Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 16 September, 1899, p.8.

[4] Reminiscences of David Reid: as given to J.C.H. Ogier (in Nov. 1905), who has set them down in the third person, type-written manuscript, p.21.

[5] Ian D Clark (ed), Journals of George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector, Port Phillip Protectorate, issued in 6 parts, Heritage Matters, Melbourne, 1998-2000, this entry from Volume 1, entry for Friday 1 May 1840, p.273.

[6] James Dredge, Assistant Protector, Goulburn Protectorate, Three volumes and one transcript of the diary, a letter book and a note book are in the La Trobe Australian Manuscripts Collection of the State Library [MS 11625 and MS 5244 (transcript) Box 16]. The diaries contain daily and weekly entries from 1817 to 1833 and 1839–1843. This entry: Friday 1 May 1840.

[7] Harry Stephenson, Cobungra Station and Other Mountain Stories, published for the Mountain Cattleman’s Association, Omeo, 1985, p.3.

[8] George Augustus Robinson, Vol 1, 2 May 1840, p.275.

[9] For information on Benjamin Warby’s father John Warby, see entry on the well-researched website called ‘Australian Royalty’.

[10] Alan Frost, Botany Bay — The Real Story, Black Ink, Melbourne, 2012, p.54.

[11] ‘DEATH OF A CENTENARIAN AT EDI.’ Euroa Advertiser, Friday 27 February 1903, p.3.

[12] On George Grey, see entry on the well-researched website called ‘Australian Royalty’.
On the voyage of the convict ship Britannia, see Charles Bateson, The Convict Ships, 1787-1868, Brown, Son & Ferguson, Glasgow, 1959.

[13] John Conner, The Australian Frontier Wars, 1788-1838, UNSW Press, 2012.

[14] Demarr, James, Adventures in Australia fifty years ago: being a record of an emigrant’s wanderings through the colonies of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland during the years 1839-1844, Swan Sonnenschein, London, 1893, p.132.

[15] George Augustus Robinson, op cit. Volume 1, p.273, 1 May 1840, also 7 May, p.280.

[16] George Augustus Robinson, ibid. Volume 1, p.276, 2 May 1840.

[17] James Dredge, op cit., diary entry 2 May 1840.

[18] George Augustus Robinson, op cit. Vol 1, p.276, 2 May 1840.

[19] D. W. A. Baker, ‘Mitchell, Sir Thomas Livingstone (1792–1855)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mitchell-sir-thomas-livingstone-2463/text3297, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 12 January 2019.

[20] ‘The Blacks,’ Border Post, Albury, NSW, 7 August 1875, p.2.

[21] Copy of Despatch No. 90, Gipps to Lord John Russel, 9 April, 1841, in British Parliamentary Papers, Despatches of Governors of Australian Colonies, illustrative of Condition of Aborigines, House of Commons Paper Series: House of Commons Papers, Paper Type: Accounts and Papers Parliament: 1844, Paper Number: 627, p.106-7.

[22] Joseph Docker to Governor George Gipps, 31 December 1840; and Enclosure 2 in number 25, Report of George Augustus Robinson to Charles Joseph LaTrobe; in British Parliamentary Papers, ibid., p.108.

[23] For Brodribb, George Augustus Robinson, Vol 1, p.232, entry for Monday 20 April; for evidence of Aboriginal people working on Docker’s and Barber’s stations, see their submissions to the NSW Legislative Council’s Select Committee Enquiry into Immigration, 1841.

[24] George Augustus Robinson, op. cit. Vol 1, entry for 9 May, 1840, p.283.

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Life on Spring Creek

Category Archives: Squatters

Mysterious Mogullumbidj — First People of Mount Buffalo

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First people of Beechworth — answering some criticisms

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Sweet Damper on the Little River

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Don’t mention the ‘C’ word.

WARNING: Visitors should be aware that this blog post includes subject matter that may cause sadness or distress, particularly to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

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